The good news about Mohd starting in July is that we have a few months to set everything up for his arrival.  More importantly, we now have a schedule for all of you (with dates) and can buy flight tickets.  As we raise more money we will pay for these items and log them in the forthcoming ‘Receipts’ section.  His Intensive English placement test is most likely going to be June 25th and his programme will start on July 5th.

We had the opportunity to talk to one of the Intensive English Language instructors at USM the other day and were very impressed by what we heard.  In addition to highly recommending the programme, she also told us about the Ethiopian students who are in her class currently.  Her level of English was much more advanced than the manager of the language centre I contacted last week. We know that the type of programme that USM supports is a very good one, but we are also keeping our eyes open for any other programmes which might provide the same level of education at a lower cost.  We will keep you all updated on any news.

We have done a good deal of research and found a university that we think is perfect for Mohd;  Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM for short) located right here in Penang.  We will be updating shortly with pictures and numbers to give full details of what kind of programs USM offers to international students such as Mohd.

This does not yet solve the problem of funding and admittedly we do not have any previous experience in fund-raising.  But what we lack in experience, we more than make up for in hard-work and persistence.  That is why we are asking 500 giving people to donate $40 USD.  This is a one-time donation which, when fully realized, will fully fund Mohd to attend university, learn English and earn a degree.  For our part, we will not only conduct the raising of this seemingly enormous amount, but will also be the ones conducting its distribution for Mohd’s various purposes. From arranging flight tickets, providing day-to-day assistance, organizing housing, purchasing books, allocating a food allowance and on to anything else Mohd might require, all will be fully accounted for and documented for your consideration.  This is our contribution (and anyone else’s who would like to help).

As time goes on, we will continually update this blog so that those who donate may be able to see at any given time the progress Mohd is making.  Once his English and typing abilities are advanced enough, he can take over the updating of this blog if he so desires.

As more and more people donate, we will continually update the amount raised and how much is still needed in the sidebar.

Please tell everyone you know about this effort.  Thank you for visiting!

I realised very quickly that to progress further, I would need to furnish Mohd with more reading material. So I borrowed some old editions of National Geographic and asked Mohd to take one home and read. He took about a week to read the whole magazine, and it was interesting to note which stories appealed to him. He was particularly interested in articles that covered technology and IT. I helped him with some words he was not familiar with and could not find in the dictionary.

It isn’t very easy teaching him a language that he does not use nor practice on a daily basis. I feel very ill equipped at this task but I know that fluency in English is the one thing that will help him by leaps and bounds at this point in time. He needs to be able to prove that he’s at an acceptable level of English in order to qualify for admission to schools abroad. And assuming that the language of instruction in whatever programme he gets accepted to is indeed English, it goes without saying that his learning experience would go so much more smoothly if he had a strong command of the language.

And so we persevere as best as we can. Mohd continues to show up at our doorstep three times a week, and we continue going through sentences and trying to identify English grammar rules. We pore over short passages and pronunciation as Mohd tries to gain confidence in his English and expressing himself.

To say that his Math is poor would be an understatement. He needs to be at university level, but his understanding of numbers and graphs is extremely below par. We were going through a rather frustrating session the other day and after I had repeated for the umpteenth time that he needs to be able to visualise numbers on a coordinate system by now, and no longer think of them as numbers that quantify objects, we sat down to get to the root of the problem.

I asked him if he had read the material I had given him (a review session on pre-calculus geometry) and I asked him what he understood of it. And we figured out that he understood very little. When it comes to technical English, he has trouble understanding and applying the language.

Which made me realise that his problem is not only that he is not comfortable with numbers, but that his reading and comprehension skills or lack of are preventing him from learning. So we had a serious talk about his current strengths and weaknesses and decided that it was better for him to pursue a course other than Civil Engineering for the time being.

He’s thought about it since then, and has decided that he would like to pursue Management or Economics. And then once he has improved his English, go on to do an Engineering degree. And from the determined glint in his eye, I’d say he’ll definitely succeed one day.

His mother, understanding the importance of education, immediately put her sons in school upon their return. After finishing primary school, Mohd and his brother were sent to Hargeisa to continue their education in the country’s capital.

One day in the middle of the term, Mohd came to me and asked to borrow my textbook. Understand that the only reference material they had was the notes I gave them in class. These students have very little to no access to textbooks and other written resources. There were three textbooks in the campus library (which consists of a small, single room), but except for senior-year students with library card privileges, books were not allowed to leave the room and were only accessible during office hours.

I was so impressed by his initiative that I borrowed one of the textbooks for him. He used it for a week and returned it with a carefully written thank you note on coloured paper.

On the final day of examinations, he confided in Kyle and I that he needed to do well in calculus as he intended to transfer to the larger, public university in Hargeisa. This college we work for, being private, is not an investment he could afford long term. He stayed behind long after the other students had left to talk about the exam questions he had problems answering, and his chances of obtaining at least a B-grade.

At some point in the conversation, I looked up and asked him what he wanted out of this programme. With a determined look on his face, he said that he wanted an education to better his situation and that of his family’s. It was such a simple answer, yet it spoke to us of how much he understood, the need to educate himself and how he saw it as his only option to help and support not only himself, but his family as well.

However, the programme he’s currently undergoing leaves much to be desired in terms of quality education. The institution tries its best to provide an education but cannot afford to be very stringent with its standards, rules and regulations lest students grow tired of too many hurdles in obtaining their degrees and refuse to attend. The school also has the dilemma of needing the students’ tuition fees in order to operate and hence the administrative staff has the difficult task of balancing out the teachers’ requirements for the students and pacifying the student body’s discontentment. Even if their discontentment comes from their own refusal to participate in classroom learning and teachers apparently giving them a ‘hard time’ for it.

This hardly makes for a healthy, effective learning environment when even the students do not understand that their active involvement and hard work are necessary in order to acquire knowledge and skills.

So you can imagine how happy I was to have met a student like Mohd amidst all this, and Kyle and I pledged to help him obtain the opportunity to a better education.